Vending Machine Vacillations

Picture this scenario ...

You're standing at a vending machine, because your child is starving and you weren't prepared with your usual store of snacks and there isn't an healthy, unprocessed gram of food for miles. There isn't even a moderately healthy nugget of food in the building. The closest thing you can get is what's in front of you, staring out at you, taunting you, from behind fingerprinted Plexiglas.

You say, "Okay, I'll buy you a snack, but it needs to be something relatively healthy, something with protein, since you haven't had lunch yet." You survey your choices, and here are your "healthy" options: Cheez-its, Fig Newtons, and oatmeal raisin cookies. Oh yeah, and a squished Nature Valley granola bar that looks like it's been there since the Clinton administration, but at least it has some nuts in it ... somewhere. You search in vain at the bottom of your purse for that half-eaten bag of peanuts that you were sure your kid stuck in there last week. No luck.

Out of the corner of your eye you see your little devil-child, who only moments ago was your sweet little angel, spying the top row: Snickers, Oreos, Reese's. Her gaze moves down a notch to take in the potato chips and Doritos. Yikes. Your stomach knots up, knowing you gotta get her outta here pronto, with something not too gross to hold her over for an hour until lunch.

You smile weakly. "What'll it be? Cheez-its might have some protein; Fig Newtons and the cookies have fruit [okay, that's stretching it]. Hey, that granola bar looks tasty, doesn't it?"

"I want Oreos! I want Oreos!"

"Remember how we talked about how eating only carbs and empty calories makes you short-tempered? We really need to choose something with protein. How about those Cheez-its? Mmm, don't they look good?"

"I want Oreos! I want Oreos! Waaaaah!"

"I don't want to waste our money buying anything junky. You can pick something relatively healthy to tide you over, or you're welcome to wait until lunch to eat."

"I want Oreos! I WANT OREOS!!!" Your child crumples in a heap at your feet - from hunger, frustration, manipulation?

What do you do?

Option A:

You sigh and punch B4 and the Oreos fall with a sickening thud. Hey, at least your kid will stop screaming at a decibel level sufficient to make people stick their heads out of their office doors to see who the demon seed is. After all, you hardly ever buy junk and it'll be a treat this time. Your kid will be grateful.

Option B:

You say, "Come on, honey. You need to choose. Please? Hurry! People are staring! Make a choice already!" In frustration, you finally choose the granola bar, which lands like a brick with a clunk. Hey, your kid should be happy - at least it's food.

Option C:

"I'm willing to buy you either the granola bar or Cheez-its. If you don't want one of those, you can wait until lunch." You gave a choice, right? That should be enough. You didn't even have to do that much.

Option D:

"Did you bring your own money? If you're paying, it's your choice." Your child may not make the best decisions, even when you're standing there watching, but it IS their money, and you don't have a bit of authority over it.

Option E:

"Just get the Oreos. Whatever you want. Just stop the screaming!' You can't take it anymore and will do anything just to get out of the situation. You'll deal with the repercussions later, and the two of you will discuss better ways to handle the situation in the future. For good measure, you buy yourself a Snickers; after all, you deserve a little reward for surviving through that tantrum!

Option F:

"I'm trying to help you, and you're screaming at me. I'm happy to talk this over when you're reasonable." You walk away. You did the best you could, and your child wasn't willing to compromise. Next time, (s)he'll make a choice without arguing and you'll both be happier.

Option G:

Something else. What is it?

_____________

If you liked this post, you might enjoy APing Older Children: Allowances

Photo of vending machine by Rkob from here

Book Review: The First National Bank of Dad

More on allowances ...

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we really liked the book, The First National Bank of Dad by David Owen. It fits in with my philosophy of giving kids as much responsibility as possible and letting them benefit (or suffer) from the resulting outcome.

Basically, it says to give your kids a decent allowance and let them use it as they wish ... no parent-designated restrictions (within reason, of course). The parents don’t decide how much goes to charity or how much is saved - that’s all the kids’ choice.

The allowance is not tied to chores - those are part of living in a family - but the children can earn extra money through "odd jobs." However, the kids are responsible for buying all extras out of their allowance. For us, that means buying presents for any birthday party they want to attend (which is great because it cuts down on how many birthday parties they want to go to!), getting an ice-cream cone when we’re at a carnival, or buying a souvenir t-shirt.

What about donating to charity and saving, you ask? According to the book, when a child receives an allowance and is told to donate a third to charity and a third to savings, he mentally thinks of his allowance as a third of what he received, not the total amount. Say he receives $6 per week; his brain immediately says that he has $2, not $6. By allowing him to use the whole allowance as he sees fit, he takes ownership of all $6, and may end up giving more and saving more. He may not, but at least he’s seeing that money as his and is taking responsibility for it.

Owen says that the idea is to get kids to donate of their own volition, based on the example set by Mom and Dad. Giving is something you can't force someone to do. You have to model that behavior - that's the only way to make it stick. This has proven to be true for us as well. All of our kids give freely now (sometimes to a fault, LOL).

And the kids learn to save by keeping the money in the bank. That's different from the way I was raised, like lots of you probably, with my parents telling me how much to save and donate. Basically, his theory is that they will learn about money in a more realistic way than having someone else (parents) tell them how to save it and spend it.

Here’s how it works: You set up a dummy account on paper or in a program like Quicken and give the child a starting sum of $25. You then give them a large monthly interest rate to encourage them to save, and they can spend the money in any way they want. The idea is to let the kid figure out that the longer they keep their money in the bank the faster it grows. 

This has worked well for us. S, who was leaning toward being a “spender,” immediately blew through her allowance when we started giving it, and she quickly realized how long it took to make that money back. These days I never have to argue with her at all when it comes to spending money. If she sees something she likes when we're out and she wants to buy it, all I have to do is say, "How much money is in your account?" She's learned that, by leaving the money in her account, it builds up quickly so that she'll have it when she wants something special. She, like the boys, has ended up being quite thrifty.

When one of the kids wants to save up for something, they'll offer to do "odd jobs," which I pay them for: cleaning out cabinets, decluttering the garage, pulling weeds, etc. That way they can buy things that I don’t want to spend money for. For instance, some years ago, S wanted an American Girl doll (which I think is a total rip-off) because her then-best friend had one and got her turned on to it. I told her that there was no way I was buying her one, because we didn’t want to spend that much money on a doll. ($95 for a doll? You’ve GOT to be kidding!) 

If she wanted to spend her money on it, I had absolutely no problem with it. She looked through all the catalogs, priced them online (don’t forget shipping and tax!), and wished and yearned and saved. Then one day we were getting some groceries at Sam’s Club, and she found a doll that looked almost identical to the American Girl dolls (except that S liked the facial expression more) that were only $20! And each doll had two outfits included. The cost savings was incredible. She saw on her own how much she could benefit by waiting, comparing, and rethinking. She was incredibly happy with that purchase, and because she bought it after a considerable delay from “want” to “get,” she cherished it even more. To this day, “Cindy” is well loved, though not played with terribly often anymore.  

This brings me to another thing. When the kids realized that they could spend their money on anything they wanted - and ended up blowing much of it at the beginning - their later purchases became much more valuable to them. Once they had to save and purchase things on their own, they appreciated them more. Even for those "crap" toys, when the kids realized quickly that they'd blown their money, the lesson learned was much more valuable than any lecture I could have given them.

One of the nice things about this system is that I never have to say "no" to something they want. My kids say, "Can I have that?" I say, "How much money is in your account?" It totally takes me out of the equation, and the decision is up to them. If they ask, or if I think it's appropriate, I can tell them if I think it's a good value or not, or I can give them tips on how to get something cheaper. But the final decision is theirs.

The only problem that we’ve encountered with the system is when an older child chooses to save over the years instead of spend. He ends up with a bunch of money! Owen talks about this, but honestly I don’t recall how he said to handle it, since our children were much younger then. What we’ll be doing instead is giving our kids an education in investing and allowing them to save and invest in real ways. That will be the best money education of all.

Photo of $5700 in a circle by AMagill from here

Photo of crumpled money by e-magic from here

APing Older Children: Allowances

Kids and money. Kids and stuff. Gimmee, gimmee, gimmee! 

People talk all the time about American kids and how materialistic they’ve become. Frankly, I haven’t seen this to be nearly so noticeable among the attachment parenting families and homeschooling families that we know. Maybe we’re in a little bubble here in Austin, but I doubt it. Instead, I think that the strategies of attachment parenting and the personality traits of homeschoolers tend to steer their children away from consumerism, rather than toward it, generally speaking. 

Yes, yes, I realize that this is totally unscientific on my part and purely anecdotal, but that’s what I’ve come to believe, right or wrong. (And since this is my blog, I can believe what I want to! haha!)

People get weird when it comes to money, no doubt about it. But if we stick to the “respect” issue regarding allowances, things tend to go smoothly, at least in the long run. What I’m about to say won’t seem like respect at first, but bear with me.

Kids need to learn how to handle money, and it’s easiest - as is many things - to have them learn and fail (and thus experience success later) at an early age. Giving a child an allowance, without designating how much they’ll donate and how much they’ll save, grants them complete control over their personal finances. Obviously they’ll need some guidance along the way, at least early on, to know how much things cost and how to calculate tax, as well as how to compound interest and what constitutes a good sale, for instance. These things all come with time.

Here’s what won’t seem like being respectful of them: letting them lose, squander, or fritter away their money. Like I said, people get weird when it comes to money. While you might not bat an eye if your child tried tackling a difficult physical task, say climbing a rope to a gymnasium ceiling, and got some bruises, and while you might not second-guess yourself if your child had his toy smashed by the car because it was left in the driveway overnight, you might freak out if she wanted to spend $20 on a cheap, plastic, light-up, gaudy, play-with-it-for-a-day, vastly overpriced tiara from the circus. (Do I sound bitter? Nah.) Or if he chose to spend $25 of his $40 (total in his allowance) on a cheap, plastic, light-up, gaudy, play-with-it-for-a-week, vastly overpriced, twirling toy thingy from the same circus. (Bitter? Me? Nah.)

Yes, my kids chose to spend their hard-saved money on those two things, while I inwardly cringed. In fact, I would have caved to my miserly upbringing (thank you, my "Depression-era baby" parents) and forbidden it if not for my incredibly wise husband, who said, “It’s their money.”

He was right. They learned so much more from spending their money - which they’d saved for a long time - on crap than from any lecture I could have given them. Of course, they've had to learn this lesson in a number of different versions, but that's okay. They're getting it now, for real.

Now, when they choose to spend their money, it’s usually wisely done. Granted, they’ll occasionally choose to splurge on something that they know is wasteful, but they do so with their eyes open, knowing full well that they’re making a frivolous choice. (After all, don’t we all do that sometimes? Except for me, of course, my spur-of-the-moment two-tiered silk skirt, library fund-raiser handmade glass earrings, and red trashy super-high heels notwithstanding. Hey, I don’t wear them together!)

When it comes to allowances, I find that what’s worked for our family is to give our kids an allowance, let them use it as they wish, and let them suffer or benefit from the consequences. This is respect: respect for their choices, respect for their intelligence, respect for their wishes ... and respect for the learning process.

One thing that was an unexpected pleasant result from giving my kids control over their own money is that they almost always think of "voting" with their money. They choose greener options when buying and really think about where their money goes once it leaves their hands. (Does it go to the local artist, or does it go to a huge conglomerate?) This surprised me at first, but it makes sense when I think about how homeschooling gives my kids the opportunity to learn through living rather than strictly through textbooks. Since we talk about this kind of stuff all the time, it makes sense that our discussions will spill over into their daily choices.

I’ll talk more about this tomorrow, and I’ll give you my take on a book that talks about this kind of allowance. It’s called The First National Bank of Dad and it was the book that gave me the idea.

_______________________

If you liked this post, you might like this one on natural consequences

Photo of Money Shirt by Rob Lee from here and photo of coins in Trevi Fountain, Rome by David Paul Ohmer from here